- In Nepal, a recent push to build cable cars to boost tourism in natural beauty spots carries significant environmental costs.
- A controversial cable car project has been proposed in Mukkumlung, far-eastern Nepal, a site revered by the Indigenous Yakthung (Limbu) community.
- After thousands of trees were felled by contractors to begin the construction in mid-May, Indigenous protesters organized a total shutdown of services in the town of Phungling and closed the major transport corridors in the region.
- Their efforts resulted in a temporary stalling of the construction process, but the project is unlikely to be postponed indefinitely.
PANCHTHAR, Nepal — On a remote stretch of road in far-eastern Nepal, three figures stepped in front of a minibus. Two were young men, the third a police officer with a rifle against his hip. The driver cut the engine. The two young men approached the window and peered in at the 15 passengers pressed knee to knee in the bowels of the vehicle.
“Why are you traveling?” one man asked sharply. “It’s a banda. Nobody is allowed to use this road today.”
The passengers were silent, nervous. After a tense discussion with some passengers explaining they were traveling to the hospital, the second man photographed the van’s registration number and let them through.
“I am letting you pass because you have sick people on board who need medical treatment,” he said eventually. “But this is your first and last warning. I don’t want to see you on these roads again.” He gestured to the second man, who showed the driver the photographs he’d taken. “We have your details now. If we see you driving again, we’ll burn your vehicle.”
Four days before this scene took place, in the early hours of May 13, 2024, the sound of chainsaws roiled over the hills in Nepal’s Taplejung district. Under the guard of armed police officers, contract laborers were cutting thousands of trees in the forest surrounding one of eastern Nepal’s most revered sacred sites, known as Mukkumlung to the Indigenous Yakthung (or Limbu) community.
Less than 48 hours later, Indigenous organizers took control of the roads and brought vehicular traffic in the district to a standstill in protest against the destruction of their sacred forest.
This hillside, also revered by Hindus under the name Pathibhara, has been earmarked for the construction of a 2.74-kilometer (1.7-mile) cable car terminating at Pathibhara Devi Temple, a popular pilgrimage destination. The government touts the project as a boon for Hindu religious tourism, but Limbu voices widely oppose it because the site is revered in their Mundhum, a powerful ritual tradition that emphasizes the sanctity of nature. Installing the cable car requires significant deforestation, which many fear will weaken the site’s spiritual power.
Pathibhara Darshan Cable Car Pvt. Ltd., the company developing the project, is funded by powerful business tycoon Chandra Prasad Dhakal. The Mukkumlung cable car is part of a recent surge in Nepal to build ropeways that can generate tourism income from natural beauty spots. Dhakal has also planned cable cars in protected areas, including the Annapurna Conservation Area, which critics say would violate the nation’s Forest Act. Although the Nepali government approved the Mukkumlung proposal in 2018, protests by Indigenous organizers had thus far stalled its construction.
But with Dhakal investing 3 billion rupees ($22 million) into the venture through his business conglomerate, the IME Group, the project has forged ahead despite local objections.
On May 13, as workers felled trees under the cover of night, opponents of the cable car, who had established a permanent encampment at the site, were swift to retaliate. Locals chased the workers away, but not before they’d destroyed 12,000 trees, many of them species of rhododendron, Nepal’s national flower.
As they stood among the remnants of their sacred forest, local protest coalitions — comprised of Limbu and other Indigenous ethnicities of all ages, genders and careers — resolved to declare a banda: a total shutdown of transportation and services.
A historical form of resistance
The banda began two days later, principally affecting residents of Taplejung’s district capital, Phungling, a town of 29,000 people, where roads, restaurants and businesses were closed entirely.
This form of direct action has a long history in Nepal, occurring most often during the country’s past Maoist uprising. Controversially, local compliance with these strikes is often enforced by threats of violence from the organizing group, and previous bandas have been marked by vandalism, arson and riots. Although bandas are often violent, sources told Mongabay this recent case included no violent incidents towards those not involved in the cable car construction.
Despite this, tensions remained high during the shutdown, and confrontations on the roads played out across eastern Nepal’s arterial Mechi highway, the only major road in the region. The cost of reserving a jeep to travel an important 94-kilometer (58-mile) stretch from Phidim to Taplejung reached 10,000 rupees ($75), up from the usual 700 rupees ($5), to account for the risks of violence incurred by the driver, a price far beyond the means of most travelers.
Even those who could afford to pay weren’t guaranteed safe passage. Mongabay spoke to one driver who had passengers, a pair of newlyweds who wanted to return urgently to their hometown for the final stage of the traditional ceremony. The driver had obtained a written permit from the police, but he remained hesitant. He turned the signed paper over in his hands uneasily and wondered aloud if the banda enforcers would respect it. In the end, he decided against making the journey.
“If my vehicle is damaged [by protesters], I will not just lose my livelihood, I will lose everything,” he said.
For most Indigenous inhabitants of eastern Nepal, whether they support the banda or not, the cable car is the latest in a long line of dispossessions that span centuries. After Gorkha forces, who unified modern Nepal, conquered Limbu territory in the 18th century, the invaders signed a treaty promising to protect the residents’ customary form of land tenure, known as kipat, from state landlordism. But this commitment was gradually undermined, and by 1951, less than one-third of eastern Nepal’s land remained under kipat, representing one of the biggest land transfers from Indigenous ownership to external landowners in Nepal’s history.
For Kailash Rai, a researcher based at Martin Chautari, a Kathmandu-based think tank that deals with social issues, the Mukkumlung cable car project is simply “the continuation of these historical discriminations in a modern form.” According to sources, this latest unrest comes soon after widespread protests in 2023, when Nepal’s easternmost region was renamed from Province No. 1 to Koshi province. This came as a rejection to a long-running campaign to recognize it as Kirat-Limbuwan province, named in part after the religion of the Indigenous inhabitants.
“This banda did not come out of nothing,” said Rai.
In the weeks since the deforestation in May, banda organizers launched a campaign to replant 20,000 saplings. Protecting the Mundhum of their ancestral lands and showing solidarity, they said, are their most important goals.
“Their dream is that future generations [of Limbu people] will not face the same discrimination that we have,” Rai said.
However, Taplejung district is ethnically mixed, and not everyone is opposed to the cable car. A key voice in favor comes from local businesspeople. In April, a rally was held in Taplejung to urge the completion of the project to boost tourism. Others herald the cable car as a symbol of bikas, a popular catchall in Nepal’s political discourse that can be translated as “development,” but in practice almost always means “infrastructure.”
Environmentalists and development organizations have criticized major infrastructural projects in Nepal for their poor execution and high environmental costs. Between 2018 and 2019 alone, large infrastructure and energy projects were responsible for felling nearly 151,000 trees, according to The Kathmandu Post. This figure includes 10,000 trees felled for the Pathibhara cable car project in Taplejung before the deforestation on May 13. Protesters say that, unlike hydropower plants, the ropeway will be of little use to locals, aligning the construction with an increasing trend of bikas projects in Nepal that seemingly benefit investors, not locals.
What now?
By May 17, the shutdown had spread to the town of Phidim, nearly 100 km (60 mi) south of the banda’s epicenter. Under the burning midday sun, the Phidim jeep station was packed with passengers jostling to secure a seat in the few vehicles whose drivers were willing to travel. As they scrambled to complete planned journeys before the road was sealed off entirely, locals, many of them Limbu themselves, voiced mixed emotions.
“Of course, I support the banda, but I have an urgent family matter that means I have to travel,” said one man from Phalelung, a small municipality near Nepal’s border with India, who asked not to be named. “It’s not an easy choice [to break the strike]. Everyone here is extremely angry about the destruction of the forest.”
Refuting the argument that the cable car would boost tourism, the traveler pointed to the attraction of rhododendrons for domestic tourists: “There will be big implications for tourism if the natural beauty of the area is extinguished.”
He cited the case of Barne in southeastern Nepal, which recently went viral as a “TikTok place” for its vibrant corridor of Indian siris trees (Albizia lebbeck). “The only attraction of Barne is those flowers, and the main attraction of this region is rhododendrons. The ministers think the cable car will help tourism, but it will hurt it, too,” the traveler said.
For the community, the future of Mukkumlung depends on the stamina and resilience of organizers, who maintain a constant patrol of the forest. Although government ministers and banda leaders reached a temporary agreement on May 19, allowing vehicle traffic to resume, the outcome of their discussions wasn’t agreed to in writing, leading to fears of further deforestation yet to come. Shankar Limbu, an Indigenous lawyer, has lodged a legal case against the Mukkumlung project with Nepal’s Supreme Court, citing alleged misuse of the Forest Act.
But Rai said the Nepali government has always been able to exhaust dissenting voices through the instruments of delay and bureaucracy. The likelihood of the cable car reaching completion, she said, is “50:50.” The legal challenge, if successful, may be protesters’ best chance of stalling the project for good.
Rai added that one thing is certain, however: “As soon as Indigenous people stand down, or become tired, the cable car will be constructed immediately. They won’t even wait a day.”
Banner image: A protest in Phungling, a town of 29,000 people, where roads, restaurants and businesses were closed entirely. Image by Prabin Seling ‘Sendow’.
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